Market Quick Take – 14 November 2025

Market drivers and catalysts

• Equities: AI-led U.S. sell-off as December Fed cut odds drop to a coin toss, Europe slipped from record highs, Asia resilient with Hong Kong at a one-month high
• Volatility: skew tilting toward downside puts
• Digital Assets: Ethereum & major alts under pressure, dominance pattern shifting
• Fixed Income: US treasuries fail to serve as safe haven
• Currencies: USD weaker, failing to serve as a safe haven. GBP weakens to new lows versus EUR.
• Commodities: Wheat and crude jumps on Russian port attack. Broad gains lifts commodities to fresh cycle high
• Macro events: Fed speakers

Macro headlines

• Stock markets fell on Thursday after Fed officials signaled caution about further rate cuts, driving down the odds of a December cut to below 50%. Fed's Musalem advises caution on rate cuts, noting tepid business investment while balancing inflation pressures. Hammack suggests keeping policy restrictive due to inflation concerns despite economic resilience. Kashkari sees inflation at 3% as high, observing labor market pressures and mixed signals, undecided on December rate cuts. Daly rejects raising the 2% inflation target, noting risk balance slightly favors employment.
• Late yesterday, the FT reported that UK Chancellor Reeves and PM Starmer are set to ditch plans to increase income taxes in the new budget to be announced on November 26, impacting the fiscal outlook for the UK and weighing on sterling.
• China's economic activity cooled more than expected at the start of the fourth quarter, with an unprecedented slump in investment and slower growth in industrial output. Fixed-asset investment shrank 1.7% in the first 10 months of the year, and industrial production climbed 4.9% last month from a year earlier, the smallest gain since the start of this year.
• The UK economy grew by 0.1% in Q3 2025, down from 0.3% in Q2 and below the 0.2% forecast. The production sector contracted by 0.5%, with manufacturing down 0.8%, partly due to a cyberattack affecting Jaguar Land Rover. Services grew 0.2%, supported by arts and real estate, while construction output was up 0.1%. Annual GDP rose by 1.3%, slightly below the expected 1.4%.
• Eurozone industrial production rose 0.2% month-on-month in September 2025, recovering from a 1.1% decline in August but missing the expected 0.7% growth. Energy, capital, and intermediate goods rose, while durable and non-durable consumer goods fell.

Macro calendar highlights (times in GMT)

US Government data are impacted by shutdowns and are likely to be delayed
1700 – USDA's World Agricultural Supply & Demand Estimates (First since Sept.)
Fed speakers: Schmid (1505), Logan (1930), Bostic (2020)

Earnings this week

• Today: Compagnie Financiere Richemont

Next week's highlights

For all macro, earnings, and dividend events check Saxo’s calendar.

Equities

• USA: U.S. stocks tumbled on Thursday as investors cut back rate-cut bets and rotated out of crowded AI trades. The S&P 500 fell 1.7%, the Nasdaq 100 lost 2.1%, and the Dow dropped 1.7%, marking the worst day in about a month. Futures now put the odds of a 25 bp December cut near 50%, down from roughly 70% last week and above 95% a month ago, as Fed officials highlight a “data fog” after the record 43-day government shutdown and warn against moving too fast. Chip and software leaders bore the brunt, with Nvidia down 3.6%, Broadcom 4.3%, Oracle 4.2% and Palantir 6.5% on growing worries about an AI valuation bubble. Disney slumped 7.8% after mixed results and softer streaming trends, while Applied Materials traded lower after-hours despite a modest beat as China revenue risk stayed in focus, keeping attention squarely on upcoming inflation data and Fed speeches.
• Europe: European equities pulled back from record territory on Thursday as profit-taking met a weaker industrial tape. The DAX fell 1.4%, the Euro Stoxx 50 slipped 0.8% and the Stoxx 600 eased 0.6%, with investors digesting the U.S. shutdown deal and bracing for key U.S. data. Siemens dragged the region after record 2025 profits came with a softer 2026 profit outlook and a plan to cut its stake in Siemens Healthineers, prompting a sharp sell-off in Siemens itself and follow-through weakness in Siemens Energy and Siemens Healthineers. Merck KGaA was a rare bright spot, jumping on stronger-than-expected Q3 earnings and guidance that underlined the defensive appeal of high-quality healthcare. The FTSE 100 fell about 1.1% as global rate expectations reset and a firmer pound weighed on exporters.
• Asia: Asia’s Thursday session was more resilient, with several markets edging higher on relief that the U.S. shutdown has ended and global growth fears eased. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 0.6% to 27,073, and Singapore’s Straits Times Index climbed 0.2% to 4,575.9. In Hong Kong, travel and tech outperformed as Samsonite surged on solid Q3 results and upbeat guidance, while sentiment got an extra lift from Baidu’s new home-grown AI chips, aimed at providing cheaper, locally controlled computing power as export controls bite. Tencent’s Q3 update reinforced the AI theme, with revenue up about 15% to 192.9 billion yuan on stronger gaming and AI-enhanced advertising.

Volatility

• Market volatility is back into view as the S&P 500 dropped roughly 1.6% and the VIX settled around 20, reflecting sharp short-term nervousness. Key triggers include upcoming US retail-sales and producer-price data, plus several Fed speakers, which may reset expectations about rate-cuts and economic strength.
• Implied daily SPX move: ±54 points (≈0.8%).
• Meanwhile the options skew for the weekly expiry shows modest tilt toward downside puts being richer than matching calls — meaning a cautious mood prevails among some participants.

Digital Assets

• The crypto market is under pressure with Bitcoin sliding toward the US $97,000 range, its lowest level in months, as institutional flows turn negative and risk-on assets soften.
• The Ethereum ecosystem is also weaker — ETH has dropped and is trading near mid-US $3,000s amid broader risk-off. Among ETF-style holdings such as IBIT (Bitcoin-linked) outflows gathered pace, signalling waning institutional demand.
• At the same time major alt-coins such as Solana, XRP and Binance Coin are following the slide, and technical signs in the market suggest the dominance of Bitcoin may still be fracturing — a condition that, historically, can herald a shift in broader crypto leadership.

Fixed Income

• US Treasuries sold off yesterday, perhaps on signals from US Treasury Secretary Bessent that the focus may be on stimulus checks for lower income American families funded by tariff revenues rather than any sense of fiscal responsibility, as treasuries entirely failed to serve as a safe haven during a brutal sell-off in equities. The benchmark 2-year treasury yield rose a couple of basis points, trading near 3.58%, while the benchmark 10-year yield rose five basis points, trading 4.115% this morning.
• Japan’s 10-year Japanese Government Bond yield rose back toward this Monday’s post-2008 high overnight, trading just below 1.71%.
• While the US equity market suffered considerable drama yesterday and a steep sell-off, high yield corporate debt was under more modest pressure, with the Bloomberg measure of the spread between high yield debt and US treasuries widening eight basis points to 291 basis points (versus the highs last week of 296 basis points).

Commodities

• The Bloomberg Commodity Total Return Index is heading for its best week since June, rising 2.7% to a fresh 3½-year high and now up more than 15% year-to-date. The index, which tracks 24 major commodities, continues to challenge major equity benchmarks for the top spot in 2025. All sectors are contributing, led by a 6% jump in precious metals, 2.9% in grains, and 2.2% in energy. Among individual movers, silver stands out with a 10% gain, followed by natural gas (4.8%), gold (4.6%), and soybeans (3.1%), while Brent and WTI, two index heavyweights, trade flat on the week.
• Wheat and crude oil futures jumped after a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, a key export hub for both grains and oil. Any prolonged disruption would force traders to source supplies elsewhere, adding further support to prices. Brent initially rose by about 3% before paring gains, with the early spike driven largely by short covering after a week in which sentiment had been dominated by concerns about a potential supply glut.
• CBOT soybean futures reached 17 months ahead of today’s U.S. government supply and demand report (WASDE), the first since September, following the 43-day government shutdown, while updated export data may shed light on Chinese demand. A Reuters poll shows analysts expecting the agency to cut its U.S. yield forecast for both corn and soybeans, resulting in lower production compared with previous forecasts.

Currencies

• The US dollar weakened yesterday as US stocks came under pressure – an interesting divergence from past regimes in which intense sell-offs in risk assets saw the US dollar acting as a safe haven. EURUSD rose as high as 1.1656 before consolidating, while USDJPY was less impacted by USD weakness, perhaps as US treasuries were no safe haven either and yields rose. EURJPY reached new record highs just short of 180.00.
• Sterling sold off steeply late yesterday as the FT reports that Chancellor Reeves and PM Starmer are ditching plans to hike income taxes in the coming fall budget announcement (November 26), which will mean the risk of larger fiscal deficits. EURGBP reached as high as 0.8859 overnight.
• AUD strength suddenly became AUD weakness yesterday on the huge turnaround in risk sentiment, with AUDNZD tumbling to below 1.1500 overnight after trading 1.1600+ after the strong AU jobs figures yesterday.

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